February 2020 archive

08
Feb
2020

Success! This thing is now completely loaded!

categories: personal; word count: 219 words

I was able to take the game data from those large Origin and Steam games that I had mentioned, put it in the correct (anticipated) folders, have Origin and Steam “find” that the games were there and verify all of the game files, and I saved myself what would probably have been ten hours worth of downloading and patching by following some instructions online! Now all I have to do is defragment the computer, compress the hard drive, make sure that Windows is fully patched, make restore discs if Windows 10 still lets you do that and I am done loading this computer! Needless to say, it’s been awhile since I have had to fully load a computer, and since I happened to pick this one up at a pawn shop I had to load Windows 10 on it from complete scratch because there was an administrator account already on it that I had the password to and there was no getting around that to put my own administrator account on. At least we’ve long cleared that problem. Frankly, it has been worth all of the migraines that this has literally caused. It has caused several.

At least now I know how to save myself a lot of time on down the line if I need to replace this computer too…

07
Feb
2020

Well, one day this thing will be fully loaded.

categories: personal; word count: 200 words

Maybe when you have a whole lot of stuff on your computer, you underestimate how long it will take to load your new computer… especially when a lot of what is on your computer needs to be downloaded from the Internet, and download speeds only go so fast even when you have a reliably good Internet connection (most of the time). Although I love having digital copies of games in that I can download them from the Internet whenever something needs to be replaced because the prior version of it ceased to function, whether that is a computer or a video game console, the one thing that I don’t like about that is the sheer size of some of these games and how long it actually takes most to download them on a decent connection.

I’ve tried to lift as much as I can from my old computer while it still functions and see if I can use a microSD card to bring it over to this one, though. I mean, I legally own everything that I’m attempting to bring over.

But I suppose we’ll see how that goes as I put everything back on this computer from the microSD.

06
Feb
2020

Genetic tests and that whole half-relative thing.

categories: personal; word count: 367 words

One of the things that I’ve found is that genetic tests such as Ancestry and 23andMe seem to have a difficult time discerning the status of “half-” relatives. In my case, I have an uncle on 23andMe that was classified as a first cousin because he is the half-brother of one of my parents, meaning that we share less DNA than we would if he were a full sibling. Even though his daughter also took a 23andMe test and is linked to him as his daughter, he is still listed as a first cousin on my list of DNA matches, even though the family tree seems to get it right listing him as my uncle and her as my cousin — the algorithm behind the family tree function that 23andMe provides seems to have been refined, and improved upon, with recent updates, which I like a lot…

However, had I not known that this first cousin of mine was actually my uncle because of contact with his daughter (and, again, the family tree function) I would probably never have known that someone who really seems like they are my aunt was classified as my first cousin on Ancestry. She seems to be a half-sister to my other parent if the information that I’ve been putting together is correct, is so much older than me that it seems implausible that she would be my first cousin, has a child who Ancestry has guessed is my “second cousin” who seems like he is much closer to me in age, and shares nearly the same percentage of DNA in common with me as my established half-uncle. I sent her a message on Facebook inquiring about this, because, you know, having a sibling that you might have had absolutely no idea about is a hell of a thing to miss. I’m not sure if she’ll respond. She may or may not know about this sibling. But it would really do for both Ancestry and 23andMe to refine their algorithms a bit better to correctly identify when there is a “half-” relationship like this. I’m not sure if they even can, but at least looking into it and trying wouldn’t be all bad.

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